OPENING PRAYER THOUGHT

Before engaging in prayer and Bible study, I shall read from The Mount of Blessing, beginning with the first paragraph on page 151. The chapter is based on the Lord’s Prayer.

M.B. pp. 151, 152 – “The Lord’s prayer was twice given by our Saviour, first to the multitude in the sermon on the mount, and again, some months later, to the disciples alone. The disciples had been for a short time absent from their Lord, when on their return they found Him absorbed in communion with God. Seeming unconscious of their presence, He continued praying aloud. The Saviour’s face was irradiated with a celestial brightness. He seemed to be in the very presence of the Unseen: and there was a living power in His words, as of one who spoke with God.

“The hearts of the listening disciples were deeply moved. They had marked how often He spent long hours in solitude, in communion with His Father. His days were passed in ministering to the crowds that pressed upon Him, and in unveiling the treacherous sophistry of the rabbis, and this incessant labor often left Him so utterly wearied that His mother and brothers and even His disciples, had feared that His life would be sacrificed.”

What did they fear? They feared that Jesus was doing too much, and that if He thus continued to overtax His strength, He would not live long. They felt sure He would soon take sick and pass away.

Did their expectations come true? – No. The opposite of what they feared took place. What made Him equal to His task? Was it not prayer? If Jesus could receive sufficient strength in prayer to perform His daily duties, why cannot we? Let us kneel and pray to this end.

Copyright, 1953 Reprint

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V.T. HOUTEFF

Daftar Pustaka

That Which Shall be in the Last Days